This Might have Been Brought up Before, But Wimbledon's

Policy on not paying the women the same amount of prize money as the men is bullshit. At first I thought I understood it. I thought it made sense, but Now I don't so much anymore.

First there are a few things to consider.
The argument in favour of the discrepancy in prize money is that the men play the best 3 of 5, and the women play 2 of 3. The men play more and so they should earn more. How many tournaments require the ment to play the best 3 of 5? Let's face it, it's the women's tour that is the most popular. It has the highest number of spectators and brings in the highest television ratings. Yet a female tennis player, playing roughly the same amount of tournaments as her male counterpart and generating similar results, has a lower annual earning in prize money, than he does. That doesn't sound right.

I agree that the money side of things should really be fair. Tournament prize money should be based on how much those tournaments earn for the organizer/promoter. Who knows, maybe they are already calculated that way.

For instance, I believe we would be naive to think that Wimbledon does not know exactly where their revenues come from and what creates the most revenue for their business.

Television distribution rights, airtime of matches, who buys tickets for which events, which matches are most attended, etc.

So the men play 3 of 5 and the women play 2 of 3. I don't know the numbers but you say the women have higher TV ratings. Are those ratings based on "peak" simultaneous viewers? Are they based on the total number of individual TVs that tuned in for at least 10 secods?

I don't know the difference of TV air time between the womens and mens matches, but what if the mens matches generate 40% more television time on average per match than the womens matches since they play 3 out of 5 versus 2 out of 3 for women? In that case the women may have a higher peak TV viewership, but if you average the viewership out on a per minute basis over the period of time it takes for the average mens match, which would then have a higher number of average viewers per minute watching the matches?

With television, the more time you can keep the highest average number of people watching means you get to run more commercials and charge more for them as well.

Maybe even the commercials during womens matches generate less money than commercials for mens matches. In an open market, you can only sell what advertisers are willing to purchase and at what prices. If there is more demand by the advertisers for commercial time during mens matches, prices for those go up higher. Maybe advertisers are willing to spend more money during the mens matches, possibly (just a guess) that boys/men spend more money on various tennis related equipment?

Wimbledon execs probably also know what aspects of their tournaments and events also generate what money in other areas as well.

Hopefully Wimbledon isn't paying the men more simply because they are men.

If the mens side of things does total more revenue for Wimbledon it only makes sense from a business standpoint to reinvest more into that area of their business (in the form of higher prize payouts) as the higher payouts will ultimately create more incentive for those players and upcoming players to give us all more and better entertainment. Which would obviously result in even more income for their business.

Yes, the women do deserve to be paid equally - but it should also be based on how much revenue the womens side of things actually generates for the organization.

If after thorough analysis it is found that the women generate the same revenue then Wimbledon is making a big mistake for not compensating fairly for it.

I think to be most fair, prize money should be divided between the mens and womens players in direct proportion to how much revenue each side generates. I believe that would truly be the most fair.

If Wimbledon actually makes more money from the womens side, they have been making some really bad decisions in not compensating them fairly for it.

(Just another thought, maybe it is a matter of time on the courts. Or time from total women players as a percentage of a whole.)

I guess the only way we will ever know is if Wimbledon opens the books and explains how they determine the prize payouts.

One of the reasons Wimbledon pays less to the women is that they say the women can earn extra revenue from playing doubles, even top women like Sharapova and Clijsters still regularly play in the doubles semi-finals and finals.
When was the last time you saw Federer or Nadal or Roddick playing doubles?

When their earnings from both the singles matches and doubles are combined, are the earnings similar to the mens earnings who play just the singles?

Hmmm... maybe we should pay them all an hourly rate..... and whatever is left over the money can be used to buy all tennisw.com members new tennis racquets, balls, and other equipment... That would be nice!